


SPLINTER

by katty_tpose



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Oneshot, Snapshots, done for a writing challenge on FNaF Amino!, henry: trying, i guess you can interpret it as ship if you want tho?? LOL, the prompt was "pain and passion", until i realized i'm utter shit at writing romance LMAO, was gonna be implied romantic, william: professional asshole and terrible dad™️
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29674365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katty_tpose/pseuds/katty_tpose
Summary: It's small, almost unnoticeable until you're actively looking for it. Then pain comes, a constant sense of discomfort and suffering. You know it's there, but you don't know what's causing it until it's brought into your bloodstream the diseases that it carries, until it's infected you, until it's too late, and by then, you're only left to wonder in your broken mind how you were so blind.
Relationships: William Afton | Dave Miller & Henry Emily
Kudos: 10





	SPLINTER

**Author's Note:**

> hellooo! :D
> 
> so this writing piece, as noted in the tags, is my entry for the Pain and Passion challenge on FNaF Amino — it's primarily a shipping challenge, y'know cause it's February and all lol, but because i'm not very good with writing romance or anything like that, nor do i realize i really care to, i just went with the more "ambiguous" approach. feel free to read or tag as ship if you want but i mostly just wrote it as them being friends (one being a better friend than the other, can you guess who? :/ )
> 
> also william is a bamf (bitch ass motherfucker) ok enjoy now

The man pours another glass of alcohol, what must have been the third shot that night, and listlessly screws the cork back on the bottle. He raises his glass to his mouth and takes a gulp, practically dropping the glass back down again before resting his head in his arms on the cold, unwelcoming desk. He mumbles, almost incoherently, again about the terrible tragedy.

"... She was so young, my baby... Elizabeth..." Henry's able to make out from the other poor man, before he again mumbles incomprehensible sorrows.

The office, Henry thinks, rather matches the grieving mood of the day's events. Gray, cold steel adorning every room, practically fit for its own funeral. Even the other man fits right in, as he quietly weeps and despairs, unable to be distracted by anything from the unforgiving day.

"It's not your fault, William," he attempts to assure the other man, though he thinks it falls only on deaf ears as the man continues to mumble. He repeats his sentiment again, gives a quiet sigh. William stirs in response, raises his head, and takes another gulp of his drink.

"It is though, isn't it?" he quietly responds. His eyes are glassy and roam the office, perhaps in attempts to focus his sight, or perhaps to remain lost in thought. Henry can never make quite an accurate assessment of William's thoughts, even in something that should be as black and white as this. Regardless of the other's thought process, he tries to cement his point.

"You couldn't have known."

At that, William twitches.

Henry, at least, feels marginally relieved, as William's eyes, though still glassy and dull, come back into focus. He still mumbles incoherent thoughts that he struggles to make sense of, but with more purpose, intent, resentment.

William sighs, haphazardly rubbing his moist eye. "At least she died happy."

Henry blinks, unable to make sense of him again — perhaps even more so than when he was simply mumbling incoherencies. "How do you know? Didn't she die because of the leaks in the building?"

William refuses to answer, his eyes darting, looking anywhere but at him, and the, if one-sided, conversation stills. Minutes pass, William taking another sip every couple, while Henry drums his fingers on the desk, waiting. The grieving man unscrews the cork on the alcohol bottle, pours another shot, and sighs.

"She's... in a better place, I believe," and William leaves it at that.

Henry figures, though, that leaving him, the conversation, at that leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He can't help but pity the poor man, his friend, and offers, "If there's anything else you want help with, I'd be glad to."

And with just those words, a splintering anxiety enters under his skin.

* * *

"So, we have a rabbit and a bear," William says, tapping his blueprint, "that should be enough for the diner for now, shouldn't it?" Henry nods his head, gives a hum of agreement, while he sketches a little top hat on the drawn bear's head, sitting neatly between its ears.

"I'm thinking we call the bear 'Freddybear'," William says, and Henry can almost hear the deprecating chuckle the other man gives at the suggestion.

Henry shakes his head, a snicker escaping him. A terrible name, he almost wants to keep it for laugh's sake, but his common sense is greater than his sense of humor, and he instead suggests the name of 'Fredbear' with little argument from the other man, except perhaps amused disappointment.

The conversation dies down a little, Henry writes the name 'Fredbear?' in clean handwriting. Idly, he says, "What do we plan on calling the other one?" lightly tapping his chin with his finger while he observes his rough sketches.

"I was thinking something along the lines of 'Spring Bonnie' — it's a fairly apt name, don't you think?"

Henry turns his head from his work and raises an eyebrow at William. "I get the 'Bonnie' part, but what's the common sense in 'spring'?" He could only imagine what the other man possibly means by it — the season, the verb, the noun...

William beckons him over to his desk, waving the rough blueprint he's designed. Henry walks over, leans to observe it, and realizes the mechanisms the man has implemented in.

"Springlocks?" But not just that, the plan details it to act as both an animatronic and a suit — not to mention, the methods described in how it is meant to be worn strike him as more than a little odd, and he finds he has to do a double take to really believe it all. "Aren't you concerned about the safety risks of it?"

He's only met with a nonchalant waving off, reassurances that "They're fine, Henry, it'll save costs and will be less expenses that we have to pay off. Can you really think an animatronic-suit hybrid would work fine without springlocks to support it?"

He feels little assured, the growing pit in his stomach agreeing, the entire idea of a hybrid animatronic-suit that could theoretically break down and crush its wearer with just a few miss steps, but to William's question, he supposes he can't, and surely William, as his friend and equal in skills and goals, knows what he's doing, if however unconcerned he seems about it.

He drops his concerns about the mechanisms, ready to go back to his own work, though in the corner of his eye he finds old blueprints stashed by William's desk with other tools and materials. They're unfamiliar to him, but with the context he's able to gather, unable to recall William ever disposing of the old blueprints from...

"Aren't those blueprints from the old Circus Baby's?" he points to them. They strike him as a little odd, they seemingly have little use now, built with different mechanisms and aesthetics and functions and more.

"You care because?" William responds in cold, returns to analyzing the blueprints for Spring Bonnie, and Henry recognizes it's meant to be his conversation ender, so he drops that too with a shake of his head, a 'nevermind', and returns to his own work, unable to feel but a little lost.

But surely, William has his reasons.

* * *

"I just don't get it," William says, shaking his head. "They used to be such nice and obedient children."

Henry gives a hum in response, signaling for William to go on, while he lightly drums his fingers against the wooden table. The same rant again William's at, lamenting over his children's recently found troublesome behavior. The elder son, Michael, William especially spends his time ranting about and shaking his head in impatient frustration (and resent, Henry feels himself suspect), though his younger son's constant wailing and hiding and running brings up its own scorn from him too.

Henry figures he has a hunch about the reasoning for their newfound behavior, but every time he opens his mouth, he feels himself lost for words as he finds himself staring at the eyes of a still mourning and troubled man, the deep wounds left still so fresh, and he returns to his usual humming and beckoning, with perhaps a nod given every so often.

"Every time I take him to see Fredbear, he'll start screaming and crying," William says, scratching at the wooden table with a single nail in what appears to be an odd mix of absentmindedness and purpose. "Isn't exposure supposed to get rid of his fear?" he mutters.

Henry doesn't give much of a response except for only a ghost of a shrug. That, of course, is a perfectly acceptable response for William as he keeps the conversation going, adding on the other perhaps odd behaviors and contradictions of his younger son, how much they perplex and annoy him. Henry doesn't give any input throughout, but the wonder that is William Afton carries the entire conversation, all until he moves on to mention Henry's little daughter.

"Charlotte's been fine recently though, right?"

Henry processes the question for a few seconds, maybe a dozen, ruminating on her relevance to William's disobedient sons, but just as abruptly as the man's bringing up of the topic of her, Henry figures what his friend is getting at and shakes his head. "She's just been herself, she's a little girl."

"Quite an obedient one at that," William (to Henry's misfortune, but expectation) adds, shakes his own head too, and says, "I wish the boys would learn to take after her a bit."

"And why not you?"

William pauses his chattering at that, his eyes cloud up a bit as if, if he were to take a guess, he was ruminating. It was anyone's guess what exactly the man was ruminating about, though. So he waits for the other man to give a response, drumming his fingers again on the table.

"Perhaps Michael would, he seems as if he would do good at that."

Henry blinks. He almost attempts to correct the man, he finds it clear as day how badly William had misinterpreted his question, but his answer he also finds is something he's unable to get himself to gloss over.

What an anomaly of a man.

But just as William reveals his deck of indecipherable cards, he quickly burns them, migrating to a different topic, and the talk of his disappointing sons remains only in the back of his mind, lurking.

* * *

"It's terrible, isn't it?" Henry sighs, flipping the newspaper over, his eyes trained on the tragic headline marked in bold. "That poor girl, only six..."

A mutual solemn tone hangs in the room. He hears a quiet shuffling of papers from his friend, who says in turn, "It's a shame our own employee would do such a thing, and to hide behind a mascot suit at that." The grit in William's tone is palpable, he almost sounds to have forced the words out. Henry figures that it's out of contempt for the employee.

But Henry can't help himself but to raise an eyebrow at the other man's conviction, says, "The police haven't confirmed who's done it yet," finds it odd that his normally skeptical friend would stay dead set on his conclusion so early in the still ongoing case. "It's possible that someone else had murdered her."

"He's their only suspect, though," William says, "he's one of the few people with easy access to the Spring Bonnie suit. I find it hard to believe that anyone else could've done it."

Henry finds himself agreeing with him, he can't quite believe any of the other actors for Spring Bonnie could've been the culprit behind Miss Susie's murder. No matter how many times he attempts to force the pieces that they have together, though, the puzzle always comes out looking wrong to him.

"If that's settled, we should fire him tomorrow. You can imagine how bad the publicity would be for the company, letting a murderer roam free in the diner."

"With free access to the exact weapons and tools that allowed them to kill her," Henry mutters, and when phrased in this way, he sighs, can no longer bring himself to argue and prolong the discussion, no matter how bitter the words of disagreement sat on his tongue, no matter how the contradictions and impossibilities harshly whispered to him to reconsider and think outside the box. "We should prevent this from happening in the future."

William stares, then gives a slow blink. "Are our security measures not enough?"

Henry returns to sift through the papers on the desk as he listens to and notes William's insistence on them having the best security they could afford, quality cameras placed in most of everywhere, many watchful employees, but he knows the answer, it isn't enough, not if they let such a murder happen right under their noses. He suggests, "How about a bot tracker for the patrons?"

He knows William is about to interject, shoot it down, so before he can, he takes this opportunity to explain, give rough ideas, jot down a few notes on one of the various papers strewn about, quickly shut down the other man's interjections about cost, efficiency, resources. "And you're not worried about it being unpopular?"

"Popularity isn't a concern with it, it just needs to prevent this from happening again." He watches, now in silence, as the other man mentally ruminates on it.

"Sure," he says slowly, "we can invest a bit of money into it, and if it works, then we can invest more to have all its necessary features implemented."

Henry nods, offers to handle the charges brought by Susie's parents himself, and her murder is all but forgotten by the bot's opening day.

* * *

He wraps the thin ribbon around the bot's hat again, slipping the end in a loophole to form a knot, ties it together, letting the ends fall as the bell makes a quiet jingle. He steps away to observe the still animatronic, stands up, and finds that it meets his eyeline with its own black, dull eyes.

"It's ready for its debut, now," he says to his friend.

William turns to look at him, then the animatronic, seemingly studying and scrutinizing it, before giving a twitch of a casual shrug and turning away from it. "You're being blamed when the children agree it's terrifying and start running off again, Henry."

He knows he doesn't mean it in genuine, not toward him at least, though, despite his (anomalous, he thinks, as he can't figure out where the man's hatred for it comes from) critical attitude toward the poor new animatronic.

"It's for the sake of the patrons' safety, nothing more."

William continues, though, in his offhanded criticism, "I'm still not fully convinced it'll be an efficient safety measure."

Henry shakes his head, "It's worked fine in test runs."

William, flitting his eyes to the Security Puppet before locking a critical gaze on it. "Sure."

The birthday party decorations, varying in hue from yellow to green to orange to pink, bright, vibrant, strewn about light up the room in contrast to the bot and his friend. And he can't help but find himself wondering, with such color and enthusiasm from everyone else, and even the building itself, what has the other man in such a negative mood, because surely it can't just be the new animatronic's presence alone that's smothered his normally talkative and extraverted charisma.

Even its function, the security it provides, he expected would've filled William with the same cheer everyone else has.

"I just feel as if it's watching me," William says in a low tone.

Henry blinks, his first reaction being to question him further, busy him with the whats and whys and hows and no, really, whats. Though he tries to see it for himself, holding his own staring contest with it, but he only finds it one-sided, and he shakes his head. In an attempt to humor his friend, though, he says, "Maybe it is. Were you its enemy in a past life?"

Perhaps he isn't cut out for a comedian and should just keep his day job, as William merely twitches. In a few seconds, though, he's chuckling, so perhaps he'd had to take the time to simply process it while lost in thought — it was anyone's guess with him, though. "Maybe I was."

They both shake their heads and chuckle, and the oddity of their discussion was perhaps forgotten. Henry reaches into a bag laid on a table by him and takes out a few bracelets, much too small for either of them, better fitted for their targets. He pockets the single green one for his little daughter, and hands his friend the reds for his own little ones.

As William leaves the room, leaving Henry by himself, he returns to the discussion not quite forgotten, and racks his brain for any logical explanation he can in good faith believe, but can't find a single one. He has to shake his head and forget, though.

His friend has his reasons.

* * *

He taps the cigarette against the ashtray, blows a puff of smoke, returns it back to his lips, rinse, repeat. The repetition almost serves as a distraction for him, and he can almost forget the terrible tragedy of today.

"It wasn't your fault, Henry, you couldn't have known that puppet wouldn't work."

...Almost. He gives William a dull stare, before his eyes flit back to the familiar, haunting steel of the office room, lowers the cigar to exhale the smoke filling up his lungs, repeat, his thoughts only partially existing in reality — the rest of his mind could only think up a million different scenarios, possibilities, what ifs, any reality in which he would be spending his time running his fingers through the hair of his little daughter.

But he doesn't get that luxury, the life he had taken for granted. No, he has to mourn (alone, he feels), while the opposing man at the desk rambles on and on, falling all on sorry deaf ears.

"I can manage the diner for a few weeks," William suggests, though he hears it more as an order, 'stay home, you're sick, you'll infect everyone else.'

He doesn't give William much of a response or acknowledgement, his glassy eyes subconsciously flit to look at him. And perhaps that's William's version of a yes, as he smiles and continues his ramble, "Fantastic, with so many incidents recently, poor Susie and now Charlotte, perhaps it's better to take my approach to management and security..." But Henry remains unable to process any of the other man's suggestions, the name of what was his little girl provoking only a moment of sense, before he returns to his empty mourning.

If only he had William lock the doors later, if only he hadn't let William be her guardian ( ~~neglecter~~ ) for the party, if only William hadn't refused to invest all the money needed in the Security Puppet, if only, if only, if only...

He gives a purposeful look at William through his cloudy eyes. A different breed of guilt washes over him, mentally berating himself. It wasn't William's fault she'd died. Neglectful as he is, he's honest and means well, Henry knows. So he sighs, lowers the finished cigarette into the ashtray, and mumbles to his old friend, "Whoever had killed her... belongs in a special place in Hell."

William pauses in the midst of his rambling, gives a slow blink, and returns his muttering with agreement. "That they do."

* * *

The dim, yellow lighting above glares down at him as his shadowed eyes examines old blueprints with a vacant expression. The initial horror, the shock, lingered as only a pit in his stomach, overwhelmed by an aching guilt drilling into his conscience. Thoughts of, 'I was so blind,' 'How could I have let this happen,' swirl in his head.

"Afton Robotics," the miniscule typewriting indented on and shoved into the corner of every blueprint, only an unimportant, unnoticeable detail to any other person, screams at him, drags him down. Plans of luring children, kidnapping, killing, suffering. 'How could I have been so blind,' a dull thought playing on repeat in his broken mind.

Of course little Elizabeth was its — _his_ — first victim. Lured by one of those creatures surely, and then abruptly maimed. He knows now in her final moments she was happy, lulled into a false sense of warmth — _he_ must've known.

Was this _his_ intention? Did _he_ intend for _his_ own daughter to suffer like this in her last moment, in her torturous afterlife, haunting the same creature that mercilessly killed her? Or was she an exception?

Answers and questions clash through Henry's claustrophobic head. With every horrifying truth he uncovers, more terrible questions he'd never wanted to ask seem to torment him, a disease, sadistically taunting him.

All of the other victims, the first little girl from Fredbear's to die, the four other children, all lured and killed in a false sense of security by the golden rabbit mascot, they must've been _his_ doing too, right?

Of course the pieces he found never matched the puzzle, never fit together, he had never looked for the pieces right under his nose, taunting him, never thought for more than a second to place anything other than blind trust in _him_. 'How could I have been so blind?'

Six little children, all as naive as him, suffered because of him, didn't they? If he had looked up for just a moment, none of this would have come to happen, perhaps he could've traded his life for the little children, they could've grown to be more aware than he. His little Charlotte could've grown up too, could've seen the sun, could've died happy, instead of spending her last moments of breath suffering by the hands of that—

Suffering by...

Oh, it was _him_ , wasn't it.

**Author's Note:**

> i tried very hard to convey things and intentions from both henry and william in a clear manner without babying the reader, it's a pet peeve of mine when reading works and I want to make sure i don't fall into the same traps when writing, so i hope i managed to convey william's intentions and scheming (stuff like purposely sabotaging Security Puppet, taking over the management and security, etc) well enough :'D
> 
> henry is really fun to write in the perspective of, too, the poor guy :( i was cackling and crying while writing this entire thing won't lie LOL
> 
> anyway hope you enjoyed?? please comment if you did! they fuel my satanically shaped heart <3


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